A wide variety of absorbent structures designed to be efficient for the absorption of body fluids such as blood, urine, menses, and the like, are known. Disposable products of this type generally comprise some sort of fluid-permeable topsheet material, an absorbent core, and a fluid-impermeable backsheet material.
Heretofore, such absorbent structures have been prepared using, for example, topsheet materials prepared from woven, nonwoven, or porous formed-film polyethylene or polypropylene materials. Backsheet materials typically comprise flexible polyethylene sheets. Absorbent core materials typically comprise wood pulp fibers or wood pulp fibers in combination with absorbent gelling materials.
One aspect of such sanitary products that has recently been considered is their disposability. Although such products largely comprise materials that would be expected ultimately to degrade, and although products of this type contribute only a very small percentage of the total solid waste materials generated by consumers each year, nevertheless, there is currently a perceived need to devise such disposable products from materials that degrade relatively quickly, thereby lessening their bulk, and also increasing the compostability of the disposable products.
A conventional disposable absorbent product is already to a large extent biodegradable. A typical disposable diaper, for example, consists of about 80% biodegradable materials, e.g., wood pulp fibers, and the like. Nevertheless, as mentioned above there is a need for reducing the amount of non-biodegradable materials in disposable absorbent articles. There is a particular need to replace polyethylene backsheets in absorbent articles with liquid impervious films comprised of biodegradable materials, because the backsheet is typically the largest non-biodegradable component of an absorbent article.